This thread is a place to report bugs and gripes with Homegauge or Homegauge Companion. As they only update their software about every 2 - 5 years, never put out minor upgrades and patches, and are unresponsive to bugs reported to them directly, this is a last resort to shame them into fixing their software. If you have a bug or gripe, this is the place to put it.

Click “Lead Source” in HG, but change your mind and don’t select anything. Then upload the report to the cloud and download it into HG Companion. HG Companion goes haywires when you click the “Misc” tab. You will not be able to see the Invoice at all in HG Companion. You have to close the program and restart it, but you will not be able to do anything with the Misc. tab including looking at the invoice.

To send email to your client or anyone from within HG, the programs says “Requires MS Outlook”. What? Has anyone used Outlook in the past 10 years???

Please put all your gripes here. Continue. Now is your chance for us to review because we are coming out with a version 6 with a blend of HG and HHZ and will support Macs, Windows and more.

But we did have an update on the HGC Android in August of 2017
We did come out with an update on the main version in July 2016

We are getting ready for another update my bet is this March for the main version. This is going to be a short release to get out the 360 feature. Then we will release again likely within a few months for Main version and HGC Android
(were thinking Summer) with some nice updates and fixes.

We have spent 20 k in the last few months with a new developer on the ios and making great progress finally.

As far as the leads feature in the main version: That was years ago and we have moved to using that there internet now. So Business reporting and leads is in our online appointment manager.

As far as sending an email from the software using outlook …that feature has long been dead. We left it in there for some old users who still used it, but its going to fall off soon. We dont plan to replace it. All the communication between your customer, agent happens online at HG Services, Online appointment manager or your email reader. In the future you will see the HG desktop software be a sleek, slim and efficient report writer only. All other tasks in the inspection process is or will be from your Dashboard at HG Services.

I use HHZ and love it for many reasons. One of the really great features is the ability to edit the deficiency narratives in the report preview. One important missing feature here is the ability to edit the photos, annotations within the photos, and the captions for the photos within the preview. As it it, I have to make my fix-it list, go back into the input mode, make tweaks there, then go back to the preview until everything is just so.

Having full edit capabilities within the preview mode would save a tremendous amount of time in the final stages of preparing reports. Please make it so.

…As far as sending an email from the software using outlook …that feature has long been dead. We left it in there for some old users who still used it, but its going to fall off soon. We dont plan to replace it. All the communication between your customer, agent happens online at HG Services, Online appointment manager or your email reader…

Russell, I’ll be distressed to see the “Send Letter” feature removed from the desktop software. Your statement that “All the communication between your customer, agent happens online” is simply not true.

Example:

When I book I job, I send a letter using a template I created to the client and the agent BEFORE they ever log in to accept the agreement. It stresses the importances of doing certain things like having the utilities turned on. That is an email I like to keep should an issue arise. I really don’t want to be hogtied into using your website to send a letter to my clients. I like the current program in that it extracts custom details like address, name, inspection date, etc. from the report data.

When I book a job, about half the time I also schedule a pest inspector to meet me at the job. Again, I use the report data to extract important details into a form letter that I email to the pest contractor company. Takes me 30 seconds to schedule a pest inspection. I don’t want to have to go through the Homegauge website to do that.

Ditto above, but with a radon measurement company if I have to sub that out.

Ditto above for collection letters.

Ditto above for letters I send out after each job thanking the client and agent for their business.

Again, I don’t want those personal communications to go through your website…I want it to come from me and be done easily by integration with my default email program.

How hard could it possibly be to integrate a user’s default email to replace the **outdated **Outlook method that currently exists? I go to lots of websites that have an “email me” link and when I click it it opens my default email program (gmail). Voila.

…But we did have an update on the HGC Android in August of 2017. We did come out with an update on the main version in July 2016…

Yes you did upgrade the desktop software in 2016. And your team disregarded all the bug issues and annoyances I sent them long before the desktop program was revised. How long has it been since they put out a minor patch to fix known bugs and make minor improvements? Why must we wait years and years to get crap like “Requires MS Outlook” fixed?

Regarding HG Companion, it was really just a slightly different user interface. Nothing new behind the curtain. And it’s plenty buggy (see above), which means your team is lousy at testing a revision before its release.

HG used to have a report preview mode that displayed the HTML report with page breaks in a full page view. I really liked that as it was easy to see if I needed to modify something, like maybe the cover page was too big and ran into 2 pages. Preview also allowed me to get a grasp on whether the image sizes and placement was appropriate. All gone now. Sad.

Russell, I’ll be distressed to see the “Send Letter” feature removed from the desktop software. Your statement that “All the communication between your customer, agent happens online” is simply not true.

Example:

When I book I job, I send a letter using a template I created to the client and the agent BEFORE they ever log in to accept the agreement. It stresses the importances of doing certain things like having the utilities turned on. That is an email I like to keep should an issue arise. I really don’t want to be hogtied into using your website to send a letter to my clients. I like the current program in that it extracts custom details like address, name, inspection date, etc. from the report data.

When I book a job, about half the time I also schedule a pest inspector to meet me at the job. Again, I use the report data to extract important details into a form letter that I email to the pest contractor company. Takes me 30 seconds to schedule a pest inspection. I don’t want to have to go through the Homegauge website to do that.

Ditto above, but with a radon measurement company if I have to sub that out.

Ditto above for collection letters.

Ditto above for letters I send out after each job thanking the client and agent for their business.

Again, I don’t want those personal communications to go through your website…I want it to come from me and be done easily by integration with my default email program.

How hard could it possibly be to integrate a user’s default email to replace the **outdated **Outlook method that currently exists? I go to lots of websites that have an “email me” link and when I click it it opens my default email program (gmail). Voila.

All of that above can be done with your letter head using the online appointment manager (except for collections). Or you can use your email reader. There are so many different email readers that to try to put that in the report writer doesnt make sense.

Yes you did upgrade the desktop software in 2016. And your team disregarded all the bug issues and annoyances I sent them long before the desktop program was revised. How long has it been since they put out a minor patch to fix known bugs and make minor improvements? Why must we wait years and years to get crap like “Requires MS Outlook” fixed?

Regarding HG Companion, it was really just a slightly different user interface. Nothing new behind the curtain. And it’s plenty buggy (see above), which means your team is lousy at testing a revision before its release.

Thank you Joe. I don’t think we disregarded genuine bugs. We are due for an update and are working on it. We do test a revision but I admit, with so many deep level features it is a daunting task. We don’t think Android HGC is as buggy as you do as thousands a day are using it successfully. We do have a list of things to fix and are working towards that.

@Dom from Fla. The spell check is in the built in editor which is a large 3rd party component. To replace it is major and will be replaced in version 6.

Ok. how bout all the wasted white space in the program. one item per line in in smart words.

10 inch tablet. several of the screens do not fit and you cannot scroll to get to the ok buttons. Painful.

terrible search features in the global template.

no global template painful.

no linux or mac version. why is that. I am stuck with windows 10 adware
operating system only because we are hg users.

cannot lock the global template for multiple inspector company. my guys can change at will an I would not know or be able to control

only can push 5 reports to the cloud at a time. Some days we have 8-10 inspections. i use the cloud to transfer from tablet to laptop and I am always knocking someone else’s report off

we upload a separate summary because agents demand it and do not want to forward or print out the full report. the build repair list can be clicked but does not work.

we upload or did upload radon reports. however on android devices they will not open regardless of the software we use to create them. Support just blew me off on this and said they could open them. I will gladly show you that that is not so as many agents have complained. the crl features is great as long as you upload the way hg forces. it makes you own software look bad.

I do not intent to include your privacy statement per your lawyers. as i do not give any permissions to have 3rd party vendors access to my customer. my people hate that stuff.

the list goes on and on.

it saves very slow and moves from section to section very slow on tablets with atom processors. i admit this could be the hardware.

not very good for use with multi inspector firms. making each inspector have a space or account to upload. then my office personal have to login as them anytime a customer has a question. so we pay for each inspector but only use one account. painful. i understand disk space cost but please charge and give me choices.

report merge still does not integrate blank customer to report with customer. painful.

I am not meaning to hurt feelings but you do not update or fix bugs like other companies in the 21st century.

many other bugs i just can’t catch them and have tried to voice them before but Russell sometime gets defensive and often nothing happens.

I remember when HG was the boss but I am sad to have the opinion that they have somewhat gotten away from their core software as they move to customer data collection. the software could be so much more.
sorry for spelling and grammar late and tired. should be able to understand from context.

HG used to have a report preview mode that displayed the HTML report with page breaks in a full page view. I really liked that as it was easy to see if I needed to modify something, like maybe the cover page was too big and ran into 2 pages. Preview also allowed me to get a grasp on whether the image sizes and placement was appropriate. All gone now. Sad.

There may be hope yet. HomeHubZone has a report preview that allows you to go in and edit the narrative sections (Item, Concern, Location, Impact, Suggested Action, and OtherInformation) and save it as a one-off, new comment, or as an amendment to the default. I’m lobbying hard for that function to include editing the annotations and captions for the photos. That would so rock.